Goudy, Alexander Porter (1809–58), presbyterian minister, was born in February 1809 on a farm at Ballyobican, Ballywalter, Co. Down, youngest son among three sons and two daughters of Andrew Goudy, presbyterian minister, and his wife Matilda, daughter of the Rev. James Porter (qv), who had been minister of Greyabbey. Andrew Goudy, who may have had two brothers who were also ministers, was almost certainly a descendant of John Goudy, who died in 1733 after forty years in the congregation of Ballywalter. Alexander Goudy was educated by his father and, after his father's death (1818), as a free scholar at Belfast Academical Institution, leaving in 1826 with a general certificate from the collegiate department. Though his uncle Alexander Porter (qv) tried to persuade him to follow a legal career, he was licensed (1830) by Bangor presbytery as a preacher. He was ordained in Glastry, Co. Down, on 20 September 1831; on 20 March 1833 he was installed in First Strabane.
It was the age of platform controversies, when men who differed in theology or politics harangued each other at public meetings for the edification or entertainment of large audiences. In 1837 presbyterians were deeply offended by sermons delivered in Derry cathedral by Archibald Boyd, whose contempt for their ‘inferior’ form of worship was barely disguised; four local ministers, including Goudy and W. D. Killen (qv), published in reply Presbyterianism defended. Boyd's reply further inflamed the debate, and the four presbyterians published The plea of presbytery (1840), in which (to their own satisfaction and that of their church government) Boyd's arguments were robustly dealt with, and his scholarship impugned. The presbytery passed a vote of thanks; Goudy was marked out as a man to watch.
He was soon involved in the still more acrimonious controversy over the validity of presbyterian marriages. An English soldier had in 1829 married a Banbridge girl in a presbyterian ceremony, but in his defence in a subsequent bigamy case heard in 1841 in Carrickfergus, it was held that an Irish presbyterian marriage was invalid if an episcopalian was involved. The case was referred to the queen's bench and thence to the house of lords; law lords upheld the verdict, and by their judgment alarmed and either inadvertently or gratuitously offended presbyterians, who feared that the legal position of all their marriages and thus the legitimacy of their children was in question. In the resulting agitation, Goudy took a prominent role, and was a member of a delegation sent to London to assist government in framing amending legislation, the important Marriages (Ireland) Act (7 & 8 Vict., c. 81). Goudy, along with Richard Dill (qv) and John Brown (qv), was also very much involved in the settlement of the question of the Magee bequest and the establishment of a presbyterian college; he earned local fame as one of the very few people bold enough to oppose Henry Cooke (qv) on the floor of the assembly, and was regarded as the leader of the liberals in the church. He was an impressive debater, though on one notorious occasion in a discussion on the Magee bequest in the assembly in 1851, on what was christened ‘Fighting Friday’, an observer, Nicholas Murray (qv), described him unsympathetically as the ‘incarnation of passion’.
Goudy's championing of liberal causes brought him to public attention in the election campaign of 1852, when in letters to the Derry Standard and on political platforms he strongly advocated tenant right and supported Samuel MacCurdy Greer (qv), who was standing in Londonderry county. In 1857 Goudy was elected moderator of the general assembly, and once again encountered controversy, this time over what he and others chose to regard as interference by government in the appointment of presbyterian ministers to act as military chaplains. In protest, he was nominated by the assembly as a chaplain, but never officiated. Goudy was regarded as one of the most outspoken of those who attempted to raise the profile of the presbyterian communion and to challenge the position and attitudes of the then established church; his pronouncements on the issues were well received by presbyterians, but were extreme even in a period when ecumenism and opponents' sensitivities were generally little regarded. On one occasion, he wrote that presbyterians who were tempted by a ‘little social grandeur and the smile of fashionable fools’ to follow for worldly motives the ‘black prelacy’ of the established church were no more principled than Judas had been in accepting thirty pieces of silver. His pronouncements in the heat of debate were often still more picturesque; his cutting witticisms were recalled decades later, and were compared by contemporaries to those of his maternal grandfather. It is only fair to record that Goudy's gentlemanly attainments and handsome bearing impressed all who met him. His household must have been one of the first in Strabane or even in Ulster to have had a Christmas tree, perhaps even before 1857. He received in 1851 the degree of DD from Jefferson College in the USA. In December 1858 Goudy went to Dublin to attend the deathbed and subsequently the funeral of his friend Richard Dill; he himself was taken ill, and died in Dublin on 14 December 1858 before his wife could reach him. It was found that his skull had become unnaturally thick, and this may have produced brain inflammation. He was buried in Patrick St. graveyard, Strabane.
He married (25 April 1846) in Ayr, Scotland, Isabella Kinross, daughter of a local merchant. After his death she returned to her home town, where she brought up their children. Funds subscribed by Alexander Goudy's friends were used in the education of his children, and subsequently in establishing two scholarships in his memory. The eldest son, Henry Goudy (1848–1921), was professor of civil law in Edinburgh University 1889–93, and regius professor of civil law at Oxford 1893–1919. He published a number of books on Scots law, and was one of the first jurists who took an interest in the comparative study of European legal authors, especially those in Germany. He died unmarried 3 March 1921.